Friday, December 02, 2005

Selective Exposure

A theme we hope to pursue in this blog is to report briefly on current research/work in progress that is being uploaded into our open access archives. Especially those that are highly pertinent to libraries, librarians, and other information professionals. Here's our first research snippet.

Selective exposure, the tendency to avoid information that is inconsistent with one's beliefs and attitudes will be familiar to librarians and other information providers/researchers as an intervening variable in information seeking behaviors. Kelly Garrett, phd from the University of Michigan School of Information and now a research fellow at CRITO, University of California at Irvine, shares his research into selective exposure (does it exist?)in a talk titled Echo Chambers or Windows on the World? Partisan Selective Exposure and the Online News Environment. Findings from two projects about citizens' preferences with regard to political information show that "individuals' preference for support and their aversion to challenge are different. People (1) seek out sources that support their viewpoints; (2) are interested in news items with which they agree; and (3) use online sources to increase their repertoire of opinion-supporting arguments. They do not, however, systematically exclude exposure to other viewpoints. Ultimately, this research suggests that individuals value awareness of other perspectives, while simultaneously wanting to limit their contact with them." A streaming video is also available.